Day 56 - March 3

Today was the school trip to Kamakura.  Unfortunately, I was still extremely sleep deprived since Friday night I got very little sleep since I needed to be up at 6am, Saturday night was the camping trip and I got 4 1/2 hours of sleep, Sunday night I had to catch up on assignments and got 6 hours (not too bad), then Monday night I got 4 hours because I had a big assignment due on Tuesday.  What made all that even more fun was the fact that the bus left from school at 8am this time, which means we needed to be there at 7:45am, which means I needed to get up at 5:45am DX.

Kamakura is an old town North(?) of Tokyo full of temples and shrines.  It took us about an hour and a half to get there by bus, but supposedly it is just as easy to get there by train.  I think I'll be taking Tsuki there while she's here, so that is useful information.  We arrived at our first destination, the Kencho-ji temple, a little before 10am.  This place was absolutely beautiful.  The huge old wooden buildings and the immaculate grounds... just amazing.  Once we got inside the main building the Buddhist monk who was going to be guiding us today met up with us and brought us all to the main meditation room.  Here we all set out our little mats, shown how to set it up, then shown how to get into the lotus position, or half-lotus if you can't do the full one.  After he instructed us on what to do and how to do it for a little while, the time finally came to start meditating.  This was a very large room, and many of the rather large doors going directly outside where it was rather cold were wide open, thus making the very large room rather cold as well.  Interestingly enough, after a short time meditating I couldn't feel the cold anymore.  The monk stopped us around 15-20 minutes in and taught us about "the stick."  It is usually portrayed that the head monk walks along the line of people meditating and hits the ones who are doing it wrong with this big stick.  He told us that it is actually a willing thing, where the person meditating feels like their mind is straying and they need something to help them focus.  They change their hand position to give the sign, he comes up, the both bow to each other, the person bends over their knees and arches their back, he hits them two times on each side, between the shoulder-blade and the spine, then they bow to each other again and the person resumes meditating.  So basically its just a way of calling in an external force to help you concentrate.  We then went on for another 15-20 minute meditation session, this time with him pacing with the stick.  I only called him over once, but some people called him over a few times.  He hits pretty hard, but it really does help.  Anyways, we did a total of four sessions, which added up to around 80 minutes of meditating.  Each time we had a break I immediately started feeling very cold again, but during the meditation it all went away.  Also, after stretching enough I was able to get myself into the full lotus position by the third session, but I didn't want to do it because it was still hard enough to be distracting.

After the "Zazen Experience" we were guided to the dining hall and given a typical meal that the monks at the temple eat.  This meal was very simple and, obviously, vegetarian.  He instructed us on the etiquette of the whole process, which of course there was a whole process for, and then we got down to eating.  Silently.  That was one of the main rules, you do not talk during the meal.  The food was alright, a couple of the things they gave us I just couldn't handle.  There was this one thing that looked like little pieces of mulch (and possibly was) that was actually pretty good.

Once lunch was finished we were given about 30 minutes to wander the area freely before we had to move on to our next destination.  Fortunately, I remembered my camera this time (unlike the camping trip, which I only had my cell phone camera for >_<), so I got a lot of pictures.  I also picked up a couple little gifts for people back home.  I'm not sure who those people are yet though...

Our next destination was about a 5 minute drive away:  the Tsurugaokahachimangu Shrine.  Yea, thats a mouthful.  This place was a very large Shinto shrine with a lot of open space and big bright red buildings with bright yellow/gold accents.  It was beautiful for a while, but then it just kind of started feeling gaudy.  It didn't help that this place was obviously a tourist attraction.  So, once we were given our two hour free time Li and I inquired about a shrine that was part of our Fate/Stay Night Pilgrimage that we heard was in the area.  Apparently, it was back up the road past our previous stop, though they didn't know how far.  They said if we left right then we might be able to make it back in time.  Disheartened, Li and I spent about 45 minutes wandering around the Shinto shrine and taking pictures, then we started getting bored.  So, we figured that if we were able to make it to the Meigetsuin shrine, an unknown distance away, in 25 minutes each way, that would leave us with about 5 minutes to see the place and get the pictures of the staircase for our Pilgrimage.

I'm very glad we did this, since the area between our starting point and ending point was the Japan I'd been longing to see.  This wasn't Tokyo anymore, this was the real Japan, or pretty close to it.  In our whole walk we didn't see a single other foreigner.  Its hard to describe the atmosphere other than it being not Tokyo, but it was really nice.  I took around 300 pictures during this trip, so there is plenty to see of the area.  At 20 minutes into our walk (we had passed the first temple around 7 minutes in) we finally saw a sign that said Meigetsuin 300m ->.  It ended up taking us almost exactly 25 minutes to get there, which means we had 5 minutes to completely absorb this place.  Well, that didn't happen lol.  This place is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and none of the plants were even in bloom yet!  I can't describe it well, but it felt so... sacred.  Where the other places were still sacred, it had diminished from the amount of tourists.  In this place, there were maybe two other people who didn't work there.  It felt a lot like the situation with the castles in Scotland.  I loved the old ones that were maintained to keep them frozen in time, not restore them and turn them into fake tourist attractions like the Edinburgh Castle.  This place wasn't falling apart - it was very well maintained - but it just felt like sacred ground, much like those old castle ruins.

Once we realized we had about 19 minutes to get back before the bus left, we came back to our senses and started getting out of there.  Of course we took a barrage of photos of that staircase.  On the way back I wanted to take pictures of so many things, but we just didn't have the time, so I ended up doing my best to take them while walking.  For the most part they came out pretty good.  Some I had to take blind (i.e. over my head facing the opposite direction, while walking), but even most of those came out well.  It would seem the gods of that shrine had blessed us or something, because even with stopping at a vending machine to grab a few drinks we still made it back to the bus with 4 minutes to spare, and we never once ran or even jogged.  Even more fortunately, we were not the last ones; there were still two girls who got on the bus about 3 minutes after we did.

Our final destination of the day was about a 20 minute drive away:  the Great Buddha.  This massive bronze Buddha was made some X amount of long times ago, to the point where the building that was built over it was destroyed and it was left out in the elements.  Even the foundation was destroyed at one point, yet the statue still remained undamaged.  They said this thing was big, and they weren't kidding.  This statue was MASSIVE.  I'm a horrible judge of feet, but if I had to guess I would say it was 50ft tall.  Just look at the pictures on facebook, you'll be able to see how gigantic it is.  I think his ear is as tall as I am.  I got a lot of pictures of the statue, and shortly before we left I noticed that you could actually go inside the statue.  I can now say that I have been inside Buddha!  It was quite interesting, the whole thing is completely hollow.  I didn't have time to read the sign inside telling how it was made, but I have a picture of it so I could read it later.  As we headed back to the bus we got the one last thing we needed to make this a super-awesome-fantastic day:  Sakura-flavored Ice Cream.  How can an ice cream taste like a flower?  It just does.  I don't think I've had any ice cream that even remotely rivals that in taste and pure awesomeness in my entire life.

Finally, we got on the bus at 4pm and drove back to school.  We took a different route this time, driving down the coastline so we could see the ocean, which was pretty cool.  Come to think of it, the ocean was on our right, so we couldn't have been North of Tokyo.  Oh well.  Awesome trip though, and I definitely want to go back with Tsuki.  I especially want to see the Meigetsuin in full-bloom and give it and the surrounding area the amount of time they deserve.

After we got back, Li and I had our daily Gundam, I stopped by the bank, then we each got back to our rooms at about 8pm I think.  I then commenced writing up a Japanese assignment and creating the presentation/making notes/practicing for my 10 minute speech in Public Speaking tomorrow.  So once again, I was only able to get about 4 1/2 hours of sleep.  At least it was a good day.